Collecting Is Its Own Reward

Examining The Drive For Acquisition

`You would have to want something very badly to go looking for it in the Fakahatchee Strand," Susan Orlean says of these 63,000 acres of coastal lowland in the southwestern corner of Florida.

As she slogged through the insect- and alligator-infested sinkholes of this state preserve, she asked her park ranger guide, identified only as Tony, a question that eventually became more important to her than her quest that day: What does he think it is about orchids that seduces humans so completely they become compelled to steal them, worship them, breed new versions of them and even are willing to wait for nearly 10 years for one plant to flower?

Tony, who also is an orchid collector trying to produce a hybrid in his spare time, shrugged and answered with pithy accuracy, "Oh, mystery, beauty, unknowability, I suppose. . . . I think everybody's always looking for something a little unusual that can preoccupy them and help pass the time."

Tony's answer also pinpoints why Orlean, a staff writer for The New Yorker, hiked through a steamy swamp seeking a look at the rare Polyrrhiza lindenii, commonly known as the ghost orchid. Pretty and pale, it grows nowhere but this swamp, in a climate impossible to reproduce out of the wild.

Orlean isn't searching because she loves orchids. "I don't even especially like orchids," she protests. "What I wanted was to see this thing that people were drawn to in such a singular and powerful way."

Her obsession began as a total accident when flying home from a vacation in Mexico. In the airplane seat pocket was a copy of a Miami newspaper with a story about a local man and three Seminoles arrested with a rare orchid stolen from a Florida swamp.

"I could not understand a single aspect of the story. In the article, it mentioned he was planning to clone them. I couldn't get it out of my mind. It was interesting, tantalizing, weird and funny."

Orlean flew to Florida to attend the court hearing on the plant poaching. At the courthouse she met John Laroche, ringleader of the poachers, who led the author into another kind of sinkholed wilderness: the world of botanical obsession.

Her ensuing story for The New Yorker focused on Laroche and his scheme to clone the ghost orchid, make a lot of money and heroically save the species from extinction. In reality, Laroche was fined $500. In a 180-degree turn of passion, Laroche got rid of the thousands of orchid plants he owned.

Researching the piece was like peeling an onion, Orlean says. Every aspect of it was more complex than it had seemed initially. Eventually, the overmatter became a national best-selling book, "The Orchid Thief" (Ballantine, $14).

Orlean's desire to understand these characters led her from the slimy Floridian sinkholes to an American Orchid Society black-tie gala at which she mixed with an aristocratic crowd of international collectors. The orchid crowd ultimately caused Orlean to reflect on the motivation to collect and the nature of passion.

"Complexity . . . fuels obsession. It has to be an irrational desire or you would get bored," Orlean says. "Living things require a whole emotional commitment. You have to know how to tease it into flower, how to cope with it when it is sulking. It is a whole experience of nurturing."

Believing herself to be the objective reporter, Orlean kept wondering about the nature of obsession. "Every orchid lover I met told me the same story, how one plant in the kitchen had led to a dozen and then to a back-yard greenhouse and then, in some cases, to collecting trips to Asia and Africa and a desire for oddities so stingy in their rewards that only a serious collector could appreciate them," she says. She was so leery of getting infected with an orchid obsession, she gave away every plant each grower she met insisted on giving her.

Although Orlean never did see a ghost orchid in bloom, her search imbued her with an understanding that is equally rare--one every kind of collector would find self-illuminating.

"Looking for something you want is a comfort in the clutter of the universe. There are too many ideas and things and people, too many directions to go," she says. "That is the reason people gravitate toward a subculture.

"Laroche, I began to realize, was only an extreme, not an aberration. Most people in some way or another strive for something exceptional, something to pursue, even at their peril, rather than abide an ordinary life," Orlean says. Perhaps collecting offers an antidote to the overwhelming pressures of the 21st Century.

"People go to great lengths to do this. They might focus on work or some interest like orchids, or be propelled by a desire to make lots of money or to raise their children in a certain way," she says. "We are put on Earth, we don't know why and we need to figure out how to make it feel meaningful."